10 years later: Do firefighters still earn the respect they did right after 9/11? - PHOTOS/POLL

AARON HALE

4:00 PM, Sep 9, 2011

North Naples firefighters respond to a fatal structure fire at 804 98th Ave. N. in North Naples on Tuesday afternoon. Officials confirmed that 71-year-old Barbara Bonny, the resident of the home, died in the blaze. Officials from the Collier County Sheriff's Office Crime Scene Investigators, the State Fire Marshall and North Naples Fire Control and Rescue District are investigating the fire. Tristan Spinski/Staff

Jerry Sanford, the public information officer for the North Naples fire district, traveled to New York just a few days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and spent more than a month working in the press office arranging interviews for national television shows.

His grandfather, one of North Naples' first firefighters, was the initial inspiration. But it was the attacks and heroism of New York's emergency service workers that "kind of expedited the process," said Cunningham, who joined the Immokalee Fire Control and Rescue District in 2003.

"Some people joined the military because of it. This is what it did for me," said Cunningham, now the union president for Immokalee firefighters.

Being a firefighter can be a great job, he said, even if Immokalee firefighters have never enjoyed the salaries of staff in some other local fire districts.

He used to want his son to join the profession, he said. Lately, though, he isn't so sure — too much politics.

"I think public service workers are unfairly taking the brunt of what's gone wrong with the economy," Cunningham said. "I don't know any firefighter who sold credit default swaps. But all of the sudden, it's the public pensions that are a drain on the economy."

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They run in, as others are running away.

It's a common phrase among firefighters to summarize what sets the men and women in their profession apart when emergencies unfold.

That phrase took on special meaning after 9/11 when 343 firefighters, as well as 60 police officers and 15 ambulance workers, were killed on duty when they hurried to the World Trade Center after the planes hit and before the towers collapsed.

Those deaths and the rescue efforts that followed catapulted firefighters and police officers into the spotlight as heroes from New York to Southwest Florida.

"We've always had the public trust. When 9/11 happened, it brought it out even further," said Jerry Sanford, an ex-New York firefighter who now is a spokesman for the North Naples Fire Control and Rescue District.

As a declining economy is pinching local government and taxpayers, attitudes toward the emergency service profession seem to be changing.

"Ten years later that sympathy is gone. Everybody is examining payrolls very, very carefully," said Ed FitzGerald, a former New York firefighter and a sitting Bonita Springs fire commissioner.

This is one of several Southwest Florida stories about the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Return to naplesnews.com through Monday for more stories or pick up copies of the Daily News on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

At the heart of this shift are politicians and the public grappling with whether they can afford to pay emergency service workers as heroes or whether the public employees are asking too much.

That dilemma is no more apparent than in Southwest Florida – especially with firefighters – as local fire districts are facing their toughest budget years.

Nearly every fire union in Lee and Collier counties has been forced to make concessions – either job cuts, pay cuts, benefit cuts, furloughs or some combination. Collier County sheriff's deputies haven't faced pay or benefit reductions, but they also haven't seen raises in four years.

Statewide, all public employees, including many firefighters and law enforcement officers in the Florida Retirement System, now are required to contribute 3 percent of their salary to pensions. Before the Florida Legislature made changes this spring, there were no mandatory contributions.

Some state workers complained that reform was equivalent to a pay cut.

FitzGerald said 9/11 sympathy probably helped firefighters get salary and benefit increases that outpaced the average American.

If 9/11 elevated firefighters nationwide, the harsh economic realities of recent years have made things tougher.

Pat McCourt, a Bonita Springs resident who unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the Bonita fire board in 2010, said the economy and local budgets are trumping the sentimental feelings of 9/11.

"I don't take away anything from the brave men of 9/11," he said, "but there are some budget concerns that we have to think of."

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At Cunningham's department, fire commissioners eliminated six of 22 Immokalee firefighter positions and the union negotiated a 10 percent pay cut for the firefighters who remained after a huge deficit was discovered in the fire district's budget. Immokalee firefighters already were the lowest paid in the county and the cut came at the same time their pension contributions kicked in.

None of the firefighters were thrilled with the deal, Cunningham said, and some even wanted to fight back.

Cunningham admits that, with the fire district's crisis, cuts had to be made and no emotional plea would fix it.

He said, "People can only hear so many times, ‘I risk my life for you.'"

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Some justify reducing pay and benefits for Southwest Florida police and firefighters because they don't confront the level of danger faced by emergency workers in New York, where structure fires and crime are far more common.

FitzGerald said Bonita firefighters never see the danger of his old department, in part because building codes make serious fires far less likely.

"You do 20 years in Bonita Springs and the risk is very, very low," he said, arguing in favor of greater pension reform.

Jeffrey Morse, a North Naples firefighter and founder of the fallen service workers charity The Brotherhood Ride, has heard those arguments, but said the risk is always there.

"I don't care where you're from, there's not one firefighter or police officer that doesn't expect to have their life in danger on that shift," he said.

To honor the fallen from 9/11, Morse and 39 other emergency service workers set off to bicycle from Naples to New York City in August. As part of the ride, they are raising money for the family of fallen police and firefighters. They are expected to arrive in New York today. So far, their journey has drawn an impressive turnout from the public and the emergency service agencies they've passed along the way.

Other critics demand Southwest Florida fire-rescue agencies focus more on emergency medical response and less on fire suppression.

McCourt, an ex-Bonita Springs councilman, said that was the central message of his 2010 fire commissioner campaign.

Firefighters point out that critics like McCourt gloss over the fact that, in addition to fires and medical calls, fire districts are relied on for rescues in automobile crashes, boating mishaps and canal dive rescues, in addition to routine calls to false commercial fire alarms.

Bill Whelan, an ex-New York City firefighter and president of the Gulf Coast Retired Firefighters Association, warns that when policy-makers cut emergency staffing too much, it's public safety that suffers the most.

"When a tragedy hits and you don't have enough people there, who do you blame?" he asked. "You can't blame the firefighters for that."

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While emergency service workers face the budget-cutting knife, there are some indications that a portion of the public is turning on them as well.

On the web, criticism toward firefighters is common and often fierce with bloggers doing name-calling like "sloths" or "con artists" instead of heroes.

That kind of language may take a hiatus during the observance of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, however. Even normally outspoken critics of firefighters and their districts declined to comment for this story on firefighters' relationship to 9/11.

In response to firefighter-bashing, FitzGerald, who sometimes straddles the fence between firefighter critic and defender, said, "We fail ourselves for not being able to tough out this downturn without blaming the cop and the fireman … for something they had nothing to do with."

Not everyone believes that emergency service workers are really under attack, however.

"The public's view has been changed for the better (since 9/11)," said Chris Jordan, president of the Collier Deputies Lodge 14 of the Florida Fraternal Order of Police. "I don't think it's worn off."

Criticism against emergency service workers can be loud but overestimated, said Joe Whitehead, an ex-Naples police officer and local radio talk show host.

"I think what happens is that the economic and political rhetoric will overshadow what 99 percent of the people feel," he said. "I think they really appreciate (firefighters and officers) and they really appreciate the service."

McCourt puts it this way: "If you want a measure of the people in Bonita Springs, you'd look at the (2010 fire commissioner) elections."

Despite his efforts to convince voters Bonita Springs fire district's spending was reckless, McCourt and Alex Grantt, who ran for fire commissioner on the same platform, lost. It was close, but each garnered about 49 percent of the vote.

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Sanford, who faced fire department cuts in New York in the 1970s and ‘80s, said whatever shifts are happening aren't personal.